Nourishing the mind, body, and soul along the vegan highway.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Meal in a muffin

I love muffins, expecially those that are made of the good for you ingreadients. I got this recipe for full meal muffins from Jen's veganlunchbox site . Here is the link. http://shmooedfood.blogspot.com/2007/02/full-meal-muffins.html Sorry the picture is not great, but the taste is awesome. I was so excited to get home from work and make those muffins. Got home, started getting all the ingredients out and low and behold no barley flour. Time was short so I did not have time to grind some barley into flour so I improvised. Here are the substitutions I made and the muffins turned out so moist and yummy. I used 1/2 cup of quinoa flour, 1/4 cup amaranth flour, and 1/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour instead of the barley flour. I also used 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce in place of the apple juice. The currants are optional, but we love them so they went in too. Even with the substitutions they turned out wonderful. Thanks, Jen! I have these with a piece of fruit for breakfast. Oh and they freezed nicely.

I went to download the picture of the muffins and this picture of one of our fur kids. I guess DH took this picture so I just had to share it. Well it was DD that took the picture. Tilly is our 11 year old calico. She is such a good kid. You can see just a tiy bit of Kelli our other calico.


Saturday, February 24, 2007

Scholarship award breakfast

What an exciting day for my DH! He recieved a scholarship award for his photography. He had applied so long ago for this that we had all forgotten about it. He recieved a letter in the mail from the college and he figured it was this semesters class schedule. When he opened it and saw he had won the scholarship it was like Christmas! He was invited to bring a member of his family to the annual scholarship award breakfast. He chose me! What a guy. I was so excited for him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking breakfast. Ahhhh hope they have a fruit platter.
Here is my sweetheart waiting for breakfast and the program to begin.

My DH was in Heaven. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, tons of fried bacon, hash brown potatoes, sour cream coffee cake, and a FRUIT BOWL! I was thrilled to find out that the potatoes were completly vegan and the fruit bowl was wonderful. The potatoes were cooked with red onion, bell peppers, and no animal fat. The fruit bowl had different melons, grapes, and pineapple. I was so excited! They also had salsa on the side along with coffee (which I don't drink) and orange juice.

Here is my breakfast. I was so hungry and this was so great!

Here is my DH getting his award. The woman standing next to him is Mrs. Longstreth. She is the sponser for this award. She had a son who loved photography and to keep his spirit alive she gives a photography scholarship each year. What a blessing she is!

I am so proud of him! My DH has done wonderful things!

You are awesome Yogi!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Curry Vegetables, No knead bread, Blueberry scones, White Bean Stew, Apple Swirl Bread, and Crispi Squares

First I want to thank everyone for their kind words while I have been down in the dumps. Not working on my blog made me feel even worse since people were coming to visit and I was invisible. Yeah, I know it is sweetheart day, but DH is at school, DD is with her sweetheart, so I am home alone with the perfect opportunity to update my blog. Here are some pics of what I
cooked over the weekend.

Curried vegetables with couscous
I steamed up some potatoes, broccoli, and green peas. Added some garbanzo beans, curry powder, garlic, salt and pepper and a little H20 to keep is moist. I cooked up some couscous too. When everything was done we poured it over the couscous and dinner is served. DD said it was pretty spicy, but loved the couscous. DH was not thrilled due to the fact that cooked broccoli was in it. He is a cooked veggie hater. Loves them raw, tolerates cooked corn, peas, green beans, and spinach, but that's about it. At least he eats them raw. Anyway I have eaten this for 4 days now and love it. You gotta love leftovers.

Here is a recipe that I got from Bryanna's blog. (Sunday, January 28, 2007)http://veganfeastkitchen.blogspot.com/ I was so excited. "NO KNEAD" BREAD! I figured I would follow the recipe to a "T" then if it turned out start tweaking it. This is a picture of the dough after 15 hours of sitting in my oven over night. Looks cool with all the bubbles. That means my yeast it good!


Here the bread dough is after the first fold.

After the fold and getting ready to rise and go into the oven.

( I followed Bryanna's suggestion to use wheat bran)

Here is the final product. The recipe says to bake it in a 6-8 quart cast iron, enamel, or Pyrex pan. WOW!, the biggest pan I have is a glass Pyrex dish that is about 2 quarts. Problem? NOPE, use two smaller pans and here you have it, NO KNEAD BREAD.

Here is it cut. You can see all the tiny holes looks good huh?

Boy, I thought so, as you can see below. This was my lunch. Squash, roasted tomatoes on my newly baked bread and grapefruit supremes. It only took one bite. YUCK! The crust is fabulous. The inside of the bread feels like the fake food you buy your children to play kitchen with. I don't understand how something that looks this good can be sent to the round file so fast.

On to something yummy. These are Jen's Blueberry Lemon Mini-Scones from her book, Vegan Lunch Box. http://veganlunchbox.com/ I did a bit of tweaking with the recipe. I made them with all whole wheat pastry flour, skipped the lemon zest (DD not crazy about lemon) and cut the recipe in half. They turned out good. I think next time I will shorten the baking time a couple minutes. They seemed a bit dry. All and all I will make them again. Next time DD will have to put up with lemon because I love it. 2 Pt's per serving on WW

Before cooking

Fresh out of the oven!


More soup. This is Susan's White Bean Stew, http://www.fatfreevegan.com/beans/white_bean_stew.shtml

I left out the lemon juice and used homemade white beans instead of canned. Fantastic soup. Like Susan says, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE AMOUNT OF GARLIC. I used one whole bulb, 14 cloves and it tasted perfect. I made some 9 grain pita chips to go along with it.

3Pt's per cup on WW



Apple Swirl Loaf from Dreena's book, The Everyday Vegan.

I feel bad because someone recommended this recipe to me and I can't remember who. So who ever it was my DH thanks you, DD thanks you, and I thank you. Of course we thank Dreena too!This bread is awesome. No words to describe how moist and flavorful this bread it. And get this, only 1T. of canola oil. I followed the recipe to the "T" This is definitely a keeper.


OK everyone, last but not least, by any stretch of the imagination are Dreena's Crispi Squares from Vive La Vegan. Yep, you guessed it I finally got my book. Yeepee! Now for the funny part. I had bought organic Crispy Brown Rice cereal by Erewhon just for these squares. I had also bought organic puffed rice for another recipe, which I have now misplaced. Guess which one I ended up using? Yep, you guessed right. Puffed rice. My DH cracked up, but said, "I was expecting rice crispy squares, but these are really good!" They are very tasty, but they stay soft. Not too soft to hold their shape or for little hands to hold them while eating them so no worries. I followed the recipe except I added toasted walnuts instead of almonds. I love that these are made with maple syrup. Great flavor, great recipe! Oh and thanks to this recipe I am not addicted to Hemp seeds. they have a wonderful nutty taste.

16 servings = 3Pt's on ww

Close up shot. See the little puffs? hahahahaha I feel like such a dork.

Calling all seitan makers!

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I have been having a hard time focusing on much these days. To much going on. My back won't quit giving me grief, which in turn makes me miserable, and I get in a rut and don't want to do anything since I hurt. So that is why I have been invisible to everyone. I did cook this weekend, but have not been able to get the pics posted. I hope I will be able to get to it tonight. DH has school so I am alone on this LOVE day, but we are going to celebrate on Friday. I am desperate to make some seitan. All of my attempts have been complete failures. I am posting an all out cry for help!. Please if you have a successful recipe can you please link me to a post, send me the recipe, or attach it to your visit. I am sure this is just me and it really can't be that difficult. I bought more wheat gluten to make it, but want a tried and true before I yet waste some more ingredients. Also does anyone know where to get vegan beef bouillon? Thanks everyone for coming to my rescue. I hope I can help someone out too some day!

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Hi everyone, I am alive, but in a rut! I am in such a rut that I let my beautiful eggplant go to waste, which is sad because is was suppose to be Susan's Eggplant parmesan. The only thing I can attribute my rut to is my back. It is giving me so much grief these days. I need to get out of it. You would think with all the wonderful recipes and food pictures you all post, one could never be in a rut. Ok, on to a couple things I actually did cook. I am always in search of a new "burger" recipe. I am lousy at getting enough protein. I found this recipe on http://www.veganchef.com. They can be fragile so be careful. The family did not care of them. Since I did I had to freeze some o them. Them recipe says it makes 6, but mine made 9. I was so excited since I am always trying to use quinoa in a new and different way. I cooked mine on parchment paper and used swiss chard. We served them up with corn, broccoli, and gravy.

Ancient Grain and Vegetable Patties:
by Chef Beverly Lynn Bennett

2 cups water or vegetable stock
2/3 cup millet, rinsed, and drained
1/3 cup quinoa, rinsed, and drained
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. dried basil
1/4 t. dried oregano
1/4 t. dried thyme
1/8 t. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup raw almonds
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
3/4 cup red onion, finely diced
1 T. olive oil, plus additional for oiling cookie sheet
1/2 cup baby bella mushrooms (or other mushrooms of choice), roughly chopped
1/3 cup carrot, finely diced
1/3 cup celery, finely diced
1/3 cup red pepper, destemmed, deseeded, and diced
1 T. garlic, minced
1 cup spinach or Swiss chard, triple washed, patted dry, and roughly chopped
3 T. quinoa flour or brown rice flour
2 T. tamari, soy sauce, or Bragg Liquid Aminos
2 T. freshly chopped parsley
1 T. balsamic vinegar
1 t. hot pepper sauce
2 T. cornmeal

In a medium saucepan, place the water, and bring to a boil. Add the millet, quinoa, salt, basil, oregano, thyme, and pepper, stir to combine, and return the mixture to a boil. Cover the saucepan, reduce the heat to low, and simmer the grains for 18-20 minutes or until all of the water has been absorbed. Remove the saucepan from the heat and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, in a dry non-stick skillet, place the almonds and sunflower seeds and cook them over medium heat for 3-5 minutes or until lightly toasted and fragrant. Transfer them to a small bowl to cool. In the same skillet, saute the red onion in the olive oil for 3 minutes to soften. Add the mushrooms, carrot, celery, and red pepper, and continue to saute an additional 5 minutes or until the vegetables are crisp tender. Add the garlic and saute an additional 1 minute. Remove the skillet from the heat.
Transfer the slightly-cooled grains to a medium bowl. Finely chop the toasted almonds and sunflower seeds and add them to the cooked grains. Add the sauteed vegetable mixture, along with the remaining ingredients except the cornmeal, and stir well to combine. Using a little olive oil, lightly oil (or mist with oil) a non-stick cookie sheet and set aside. Place the cornmeal on a small plate. Using a 1/2 cup measuring cup, portion the grain-vegetable mixture into 6 patties. Dust the patties on all sides with the cornmeal and place them on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve the patties plain or with your choice of condiments.
Yield: 6 patties
weight watchers 4 points @ 9 patties


My taste buds wanted some type of Asian stir fry and this is what I came up with. I wasn't thrilled at first since it wasn't exactly what I was going for, but since sitting her eating and blogging, the flavors have actually come together. I might have put a tiny bit too much red pepper because my lips are burning off. lol I just stir fried some broccoli, carrot, green onion, and cabbage. My sauce was a mixture of tamari, rice wine vinegar, ginger, garlic, and about 1T of brown sugar. Oh and those red pepper flakes. Once the veggies were near done I threw in some cooked spaghetti and let that heat through.


Thanks for visiting and I sure hope I am out of this rut by Saturday. I really want to cook something spectacular.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Maple Banana loaf



I am famous for visiting everyones blogs, getting ideas for my weekly menu, and then forgetting before I am done surfing what I wanted to cook. Everyone has such great recipes and ideas that my brain goes into "hyper"drive and I get totally out of control excited and fail to make a note or even try to remember. (I love to cook, can you tell?) Write it down I told myself and I listened and did it. lol I did! This is a first. Not only did I write down the name of the recipe and where I could find it. I followed through and made the first one on the list. I was visiting Megan's blog January 29th post, http://meganthevegan.blogspot.com when I saw the picture of Dreena's Maple Banana Loaf that Megan had baked. Her bread looked so good that I put that on the list. Let me tell you, not only is the bread easy to make, it is delicious. The recipe calls for either all whole wheat pastry flour or a mixture of both whole wheat pastry and kamut flours. I made mine with both flours and substituted 1 Tablespoon of the kamut for 1 Tablespoon of flaxseed meal. I think next time I will increase that to 2 or 3 Tablespoons. I baked mine in an 8.5 x 4.5 glass bread pan. I followed the advice that was given to Megan and not only lightly oiled the pan, but lightly floured it too. There was only a tiny bit of sticking on the bottom when I removed it from the pan. As you can see in the picture is did leave little white on the sides, but it still tastes wonderful! DD and DH loved it. The banana bread recipe that I grew up with had 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of oil in it. GROSS! This is so much better and much more healthy. Weight Watcher points = 3pts for 8-10 servings.